The defining feature of 2020 has been the pandemic, so it is a tricky balancing act to spread holiday cheer while acknowledging that 2020 has been a difficult year for most.

It is our hope, despite these challenges, you will find a way to celebrate the holidays and that peace, joy, and prosperity will define 2021.

Thank you for your support and ongoing partnerships. You are one of the reasons our college is a success story.

We are truly grateful for all the connections we have with so many diverse communities.

One advantage to a virtual convocation ceremony is that every one of you can “attend.” Please join us Thursday, December 17, at 2 p.m., as we celebrate all our graduates.

Our awards ceremony also will be virtual. Tune in on Wednesday, December 16, at 2 p.m., to celebrate these stellar award recipients:

Outstanding Graduate Student

Educational Policy Studies & Practice

Outstanding Senior

Disability & Psychoeducational Studies

Outstanding Senior

Rehabilitation Studies & Services

Outstanding Senior

Literacy, Learning & Leadership

Outstanding Elementary Education Student Teacher and

Lester & Roberta Smith Outstanding Teacher

Managers, Leaders & Professional Contributors

Staff Award for Excellence

Professional Contributors, Organizational Contributors & Classified

Staff Award for Excellence

Expressing gratitude carries benefits for both the giver and the receiver. Showing appreciation not only strengthens relationships, but it can help both parties to savor the positive and be reminded of community impact.

This is just one of the reasons the college's Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative and Ben’s Bells Project joined forces to create a virtual gratitude wall to show teachers, principals, counselors, school bus drivers, etc., how much they are appreciated.

The gratitude wall was unveiled during TREC’s Educator Celebration held earlier this month. This is Ben’s Bells first virtual gratitude wall. Take a peek to see the nearly 300 notes of gratitude. If you are involved in education, you just may be on the list!

Many of you will remember Alice Paul, who was a faculty member in the college for 30 years. She served as head of the college’s Department of Teaching & Teacher Education (now the Department of Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies) and was the first Native American academic department head at the university. She was recognized nationally as an authority on early childhood education and was remembered in this Arizona Alumni magazine article.

A side note: Paul’s daughter, Debbie Bergman, is a three-time College of Education alumna! Read more about Paul’s daughter on our website.

November was Native American Heritage Month, so it was especially appropriate that Gabriella Cázares-Kelly (Tohono O'odham), a 2005 College of Education alumna, won the November election for Pima County Recorder. She is the first Indigenous person to hold a county-wide elected office and a first for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Cazares-Kelly noted on her Facebook page, “I’m very proud to break through this barrier, but I am also aware that it means there has been a lack of representation in our local government. The state of Arizona is derived from the O’odham words alĭ ṣonak. Pima County is named after O’odham people. And the heart of Pima County is Cuk Ṣon — now known as Tucson — another O’odham word. We are surrounded by place names that come from the Tohono O’odham language, and yet no Tohono O’odham people or any other Native Americans have been a part of our county’s government. We have never been in the rooms or at the tables where decisions that impact our lives are being made. My win is a bittersweet accomplishment and we still have a long way to go.”

The geologic timeline of fossils tells us the Sonoran Desert was an aquatic region during the Paleozoic era, likely a shallow tropical ocean, so perhaps it is not a total stretch of the imagination to find an aquatic mammal in Southern Arizona. But this particular whale happens to be a skeleton donated to the Bisbee Science Lab by the College of the Atlantic in Maine and was delivered in a very large truck by one of its professors. Students with the Bisbee Science Lab and some of our own interns will clean and reassemble the whale skeleton, which will be installed at the Bisbee Science Lab's Outdoor Learning Center.

The donation also includes the bones of a pilot whale, which the Bisbee Science Lab will use as part of a traveling educational exhibit on biology, nature, and science throughout Cochise County. 

Professor of Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies Etta Kralovec, chair of the board of the Bisbee Science Lab, said they have been working on the acquisition for a year and a half. 

Arizona Public Media featured the new acquisition in this story.

Associate Professor Desiree Vega (right) and school psychology doctoral student Alaina Puff published this article in the Phi Delta Kappan on how counselors and psychologists support the college aspirations of students of color.